"'Very strange—very strange,' I replied. 'We in Olympus think that Shakespeare was written by the victory over the Armada, and published by Elizabeth and Co.'
"'Do you really think such stuff in Olympus?' exclaimed Mr Caine; 'then I do not wonder that I have never been invited to that place. What has the Armada to do with Hamlet or King Lear? You might just as well say that my novels were written by our victory at Colenso and Spion Kop. It is revoltingly absurd. A book is a book and not shrapnel or bombs. Sir, I am ashamed of you; the purple of red indignation rises swellingly into my distended physiognomy, and my thought-fraught forehead sinks under the ignominy of such life-bereft incoherences!'
"I advised Mr Caine to drink Perrier; he thanked me profusely, and assured me that he had always done so. He evidently mixed it up with the Pierian sources of literature which, I learn, provide the innumerable papers of the Associated Press with the necessary water under the name of Perrier.
"In my honour my American lady friend gave, a few days later, a concert. The little ones call a concert a series of instrumental and vocal pieces played for sheer amusement, and without any relation to poetry, dance, or religion. I have these three to four hundred years accustomed myself to their music, which is thoroughly different from ours, being polyphonous, whereas ours was never so. Dionysus, who presides at their music, has often told us that he introduced it into the modern world in order to show his exceeding power even in times when the men and women have lamentably fallen from the height of our Grecian culture. Our music was essentially Apollinic; that of the moderns is Dionysiac. You remember, O Zeus, that even Apollo was moved when three of the moderns had the honour to perform before him. Even he praised Mozart, Chopin, and some pieces of Weber. You need not blush, Frédéric, and you might help me to entertain and charm our holy circle by playing us one of your compositions in which beauty of form is married in tender love to truth of feeling."
Thereupon, at a sign of Zeus, Milo of Crotona, the Olympian victor of all victors, carried a piano on his mighty back, and put it down gently in one of the mystic barks. Chopin, bowing to the gods, and more particularly to Juno and Diana, sat down to the instrument and played the second and the third movement of his E minor Concerto. Round him waved the three Graces, while Dionysus laid an ivy wreath on his blessed head. Even the gods were moved, and when Frédéric had ended, they applauded him with passionate admiration.
"I wish, O Chopin," continued Alcibiades, "I had known you in my mortal time. What Terpander and Thaletas, the great musicians, did for Sparta, you might have helped me to do for Athens. It was not to be. The thought saddens me still. More than Sophocles and Aristophanes or Socrates, your incomparable music would have helped to keep the Kosmos of Athens in due proportions."
A short pause ensued, and all looked with timidity on Zeus' immovable face.
"But let us drop these sorrowful reminiscences and return to the London concert given by my American hostess.